Government’s strategy fails to support DPOs, as more close due to ‘hostile environment’
The government has been criticised for failing to support disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) through its National Disability Strategy, as new figures provide further evidence of the “extremely hostile” environment they are facing.
The strategy, heavily-criticised by DPOs on its release last week, appears to offer nothing to support them other than a pledge to set up a taskforce to improve their access to government contracts.
Now, just days later, the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives (SOL) has revealed to Disability News Service (DNS) that 33 of its member organisations across the UK – nearly one in 10 (nine per cent) – have been forced to close in the last two years.
Only two years ago, SOL and the National Survivor User Network raised concerns about the fall in the number of user-led groups, due to austerity cuts and other trends affecting their funding.
SOL said then that it had lost 124 user-led groups – more than a quarter (26 per cent) of its national network – between 2016 and 2019, placing the diversity of the user-led sector under threat.
SOL’s new concerns come only weeks after a report by Tracey Lazard, of Inclusion London, and Mark Harrison, of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), warned that DPOs across England were in an “increasingly precarious situation”, with many existing “hand to mouth” with “little ability to carry out long term planning or invest in staff and service development”.
Becki Meakin, SOL’s involvement manager, told DNS that the user-led sector was experiencing “an extremely hostile funding environment” at the same time that the pandemic has seen demand for their services soar.
She said: “It is yet again disappointing that government policy-makers have failed to recognise the importance of user-led and disabled people’s organisations in the recent published disability strategy.
“Shaping Our Lives has been working to raise awareness of the funding crisis in the user-led sector since 2019 and have shared evidence with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS and the Department for Work and Pensions.
“However, the only reference to supporting user-led organisations in the disability strategy is about making commissioning for government contracts more accessible to user-led groups.
“As many user-led organisations find the latest 10 years of austerity an appalling attack on the rights and welfare of disabled people and others from marginalised communities, it does not seem likely they will be queuing up to apply for government contracts.”
She added: “The COVID-19 pandemic saw disabled people’s organisations leap to support people in their local communities, providing basic equipment such as personal protective equipment and delivering food and essentials at a time when many of the people helping were also most at risk of COVID-19.
“The government was much slower to act, and without the work of disabled people’s organisations, many people would have been totally abandoned.
“It is striking that even in light of this evidence, the DHSC only made funding available retrospectively for costs that could be evidenced, and in a manner which was impossible for most disabled people’s organisations to access it.”
She also pointed to SOL’s Crisis, Challenge and Change report on the impact of the pandemic on disabled people and DPOs, which revealed in December the fear that there would be “a continued lack of recognition from central Government and significant national funders that the disability sector needs long term investment”.
Harrison, a member of the ROFA steering group, said there was no recognition in the government’s “so-called strategy” of the plight DPOs were in.
He said: “We have to remember that Justin Tomlinson [the minister for disabled people] created and then closed down a DPO forum after three meetings.
“There is no commitment from the government either to engage or co-produce with DPOs or fund DPOs.”
He said DPOs and others were now beginning the process that will lead to the next international examination of the government’s progress in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which he said would clearly show regression in its engagement and support for DPOs.
In its last report on the UK, in 2017, the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities called on the UK government to ensure “sufficient funding” of DPOs to allow them to monitor its progress in implementing the convention.
Harrison said SOL’s latest figures came “as no surprise, because despite government rhetoric, they have made austerity permanent for local authorities and the majority of DPOs get their core support from local authorities, who in order to balance their budgets have had to retreat to their statutory duties.
“Because there is no statutory duty around funding DPOs, it is inevitable that many have closed and many will continue to close over the coming years.”
5 August 2021
Minister’s announcement suggests few of his disability ambassadors are disabled people
The minister for disabled people appears to have appointed a string of non-disabled people to be his new disability ambassadors, just as his government’s National Disability Strategy was claiming it would remove barriers to disabled people’s participation in public life.
Justin Tomlinson released the names of 12 new disability and access ambassadors on the same day last week that prime minister Boris Johnson said the new strategy was about “our ability to acknowledge and appreciate the contribution that disabled people make to our national life”.
The strategy – heavily criticised by disabled people’s organisations – aims to “help ensure disabled people can play a full role in society” and “remove barriers to participation in public life”, while it claims that the government is “committed to ensuring fairness and inclusivity in public appointments”.
But Tomlinson’s announcement, published quietly as “guidance” rather than through a press release, appears to include as few as three disabled people – creative industries ambassador Allan MacKillop, rail travel ambassador Caroline Eglinton and buses ambassador Claire Walters – in his 12 new appointments.
This could mean there are only three disabled people out of a total of 15 ambassadors now in post.
Other ambassadors include those for the built environment, energy, pubs and restaurants, retail, and universities.
The ambassadors – who are not paid for their work – are supposed to “use their influential status as leaders in their sectors to drive improvements to the accessibility, and quality, of services and facilities”.
It is is not possible to say exactly how many disabled ambassadors there are, as the Department for Work and Pensions has always refused to provide this number, even though the role is supposed to be about championing disability inclusion.
But David Buxton, chief executive of the London-based disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, said: “It seems the majority of the disability and access ambassadors are non-disabled, without lived experience.
“Why doesn’t the minister simply appoint disabled leaders as a set of strong and positive role models to influence employers, business owners, leaders, politicians and decision-makers in this 21st century modern and ever-changing world?
“Again, nothing about us, without us; even more importantly, without our voice, without us!”
Disability News Service approached several of the new ambassadors to ask them whether they believed the government should have appointed disabled people to the posts.
Several had not responded by noon today (Thursday).
Professor Geoff Layer, vice chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton and chair of the Disabled Students’ Commission and the new ambassador for universities, declined to comment.
Peter Hamilton, head of market engagement for insurance giant Zurich and the new ambassador for insurance, also declined to comment on the apparent failure to appoint more disabled people to the posts.
Claire Walters, chief executive of Bus Users UK, and one of the few disabled ambassadors to be appointed, said that whether the posts should be given to disabled people was a question for the government’s Disability Unit.
But she said: “These appointments have only just been made public and not everyone will necessarily have disclosed whether they have a disability and some may not wish to.”
A government spokesperson declined to say if Tomlinson was embarrassed to be left with so few disabled ambassadors, just days after the government highlighted the barriers to participation in public life.
But she said in a statement: “Disability disclosure is entirely personal, and to insist on disclosure in the appointment would not be lawful.
“The ambassadors are all figures with proven influence in their industries, who were required to demonstrate they are passionate about driving social change for disabled people, and able to be public advocates for improving the accessibility and quality of services and facilities in their sectors.”
But she declined to say how many ambassadors had voluntarily disclosed they were disabled people, or why the government had failed to make “lived experience of disability” one of the selection criteria for the appointments, or to reserve the posts for disabled people.
5 August 2021
DWP accused of ‘reprehensible’ breach of the law over DNS information battle
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been accused by leading lawyers of an “extraordinary and reprehensible infringement of the law” over its failure to comply with its legal duties to release information about Disability News Service editor John Pring.
Pring has been trying for two years to obtain details of emails and other information written about him by DWP’s communications department.
But despite the Information Commissioner’s Office agreeing that DWP’s failure to provide the information was a clear breach of data protection laws, the department has repeatedly refused to release the information.
Now information rights legal experts at solicitors Mishcon de Reya have agreed to act pro bono for the Disability News Service (DNS) editor in his battle to secure the information from DWP.
They have written to DWP about Pring’s latest attempt to secure the information, in January 2020.
The letter states that the department’s behaviour is “unfair and unlawful”, and that it has 21 days to meet its legal obligations.
Pring had asked to see copies of emails that mentioned him and were sent or received by members of the DWP communications department’s disability desk during 2019.
DWP should have produced the information within one month, and certainly within three months, but it has repeatedly failed to answer emails about the request or provide the information.
In its letter, Mishcon de Reya says DWP “utterly failed” to comply with the request, under the General Data Protection Regulation, and that this failure was an “extraordinary and reprehensible infringement of the law”.
It points out that DWP had also ignored the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) instruction last year to provide the information to Pring “ASAP”.
In its letter, Mishcon de Reya tells DWP: “Our client is an eminent journalist – founder and editor of Disability News Service, a highly respected public interest news publication filling the gap created by the absence of in-depth reporting in both the specialist and mainstream media on issues that affect the lives of disabled people.
“Our client has a compelling interest in understanding what personal data you process about him, in his capacity as a journalist and campaigner on matters of intense public interest.
“And he has a right to the data and the associated information: your failure to respect his right – as well as being a serious contravention of your statutory obligations – reflects terribly on you, as a government department.”
Mishcon de Reya also points out that Pring was forced to take legal action because of ICO’s refusal to use its own powers to ensure DWP passed over the information.
Jon Baines, senior data protection specialist at Mishcon de Reya, said: “Mr Pring should never have been put in this situation.
“Being able to access one’s data within a specified timescale is a fundamental human right, yet DWP has decided to evade its obligations in this regard, whilst the ICO has simply stood back and refused to take any meaningful action.
“It cannot be right that a data subject – and especially one who performs such an important public interest role as Mr Pring – is forced to consult lawyers simply to get a government department to comply with the law.”
DNS was originally put in touch with Mishcon de Reya earlier this year by the Campaign for Freedom of Information (CFOI).
Katherine Gundersen, CFOI’s deputy director, said: “We’re deeply concerned a government department has been able to flout their legal obligations for so long and the ICO has allowed it to.
“We appreciate the ICO can’t enforce every subject access request it receives a complaint about, but it needs to show it’s prepared to do so where necessary.
“In this case, the DWP is discriminating against a journalist whose reporting of disability issues it apparently considers to be a nuisance and has ignored an instruction from the regulator to provide him with data it holds on him.”
An ICO spokesperson said: “The Department for Work and Pensions had informed us that it had responded fully to the subject access request. We are now reopening the case.
“Our role as an independent regulator is to act in the public interest, and our approach has always been to be a pragmatic and proportionate regulator as set out in our Regulatory Action Policy.”
A DWP spokesperson said the department would not be adding to its previous written responses about the subject access request.
Meanwhile, DWP and the government’s Disability Unit appear to be continuing to treat DNS, and its disabled editor, in a less fair way than other journalists and publications.
After DNS was told last week by a non-government source about the impending launch of the National Disability Strategy, Pring asked the press office for the Cabinet Office – where the Disability Unit is based – to provide an embargoed copy of the report.
There was no response to this request from the Cabinet Office, and while other journalists across the country were able to read the strategy hours ahead of its publication, DNS was not.
DNS was also not invited to a briefing about the strategy by Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, with journalists on other national publications.
The previous week, DWP’s press office failed to send any press releases about the new disability benefits green paper to DNS.
Despite DNS subsequently asking a DWP press officer to ensure it was sent all the department’s press releases, no press release or copy of the disability strategy was sent last week, other than a press release about the transport elements of the strategy from the Department for Transport.
The Cabinet Office refused to comment on the failure to provide DNS with an embargoed copy of the National Disability Strategy.
A DWP spokesperson also declined to comment on the failure to provide DNS with an embargoed copy of the strategy.
He said he had sent DNS a copy of the strategy and the press release on request, although this was only in response to a complaint from DNS and after the strategy had already been published and had appeared on the DWP website.
He said he had been on annual leave the previous week and had not been aware that DNS had asked to be sent all future DWP press releases.
He said: “I apologise this was not sent to you earlier.”
He said the media briefing had only been held with “national press” and “in no way was this a slight against you”.
In recent years, DNS has had to ask the DWP press office repeatedly to provide it with departmental press releases, because of its continuing failure to do so.
And last year, DWP stopped providing meaningful responses to DNS news stories, until it was publicly shamed into changing its policy.
5 August 2021
Disabled politicians face ‘multitude’ of barriers, says government report
Political parties and institutions such as local councils have repeatedly broken equality laws by failing to make reasonable adjustments for disabled politicians, according to research commissioned by the government.
The report says that disabled people in England and Wales face a “multitude” of barriers across the different stages of the political process, from activism and considering running for office, to the selection and election processes, and once they have been elected.
Researchers found disabled politicians had been prevented from attending local party meetings because of access failings, had been invited to take part in inaccessible hustings events during election campaigns, and faced a lack of support from their party once selected.
And because of the barriers they continued to face, disabled politicians typically had to spend far more time fulfilling their duties than their non-disabled colleagues, once they were elected.
The researchers conducted interviews with 45 disabled people who were MPs, former MPs, local councillors, prospective parliamentary candidates, local candidates, and those who had considered standing for election or had tried to get selected, for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, the Green party, and as independents.
They were told of local party meetings held in inaccessible venues, of a lack of British Sign Language interpretation, and a failure to ensure that hearing loops were in place.
One local councillor could not attend his own party’s campaign fundraiser because it was held upstairs in a pub with no lift.
Another local election candidate was told that a campaign social event was being held in a restaurant that was inaccessible for wheelchair-users because it was a cheap venue and the event had to be accessible for those on low incomes.
Every one of the interviewees who stood for election reported multiple barriers during the election process itself.
Some were invited to take part in hustings in inaccessible venues, others said they had been unable to join the other candidates on the hustings stage, while the hustings format could be particularly difficult for deaf and neurodiverse candidates.
Disabled politicians continued to face “significant barriers” after they were elected, says the report.
Two disabled councillors described how a lift was often out of order, preventing them accessing their office and meeting rooms, but their councils refused to make reasonable adjustments for them, such as providing offices and rearranging meetings on the ground floor.
And disabled MPs described how they were not always able fulfil their duties because of the “aggressive and combative” nature of Westminster, says the report.
One MP described Westminster’s “inaccessible, hostile, bullying culture”, while another said they knew of several other MPs who were not willing to identify as disabled or disclose their impairments because of the stigma and discrimination they believed they would face.
The long-awaited report was commissioned in December 2018 by the Government Equalities Office (GEO), but it was finally published last week alongside the government’s new National Disability Strategy.
It concludes: “Whilst around a third of our participants highlighted the support and encouragement that they had received from their political party, local authority or from the support services at Westminster, there were clear examples of where parties and institutions had failed to make reasonable adjustments to facilitate the participation of disabled people.
“In other words, equalities legislation has been breached.”
A second report commissioned by GEO, and written by the same authors, Dr Elizabeth Evans, of Goldsmiths, University of London, and Dr Stefanie Reher, of the University of Strathclyde, was also published last week.
This second report evaluated the success of the government’s temporary EnAble fund.
The £250,000 fund was set up in December 2018 to provide financial support for disabled candidates for political office in England to meet extra disability-related expenses, such as the cost of distributing campaign material and to pay personal assistants.
The fund initially only covered the 2019 English local elections, but it was later extended to cover the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, although these were postponed to the following year because of the pandemic.
It also provided retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.
Of the 24 EnAble applicants who completed a survey, 88 per cent of them said they had had a “very positive” experience with the fund, and 92 per cent said the fund helped decrease the barriers they faced in the election process, while 42 per cent thought they could “probably not” have stood for election without EnAble funding.
The fund was mostly run by Disability Rights UK, with some support from the Local Government Association, and it provided funding for 41 candidates from across England, nearly half of whom (45 per cent) were later elected.
In last week’s national strategy, the government finally promised to “support a new scheme from April 2022 to support those seeking to become candidates and – as importantly – once they have been elected to public office”.
Successive Conservative-led governments have previously refused to set up a permanent fund.
The short-lived Access to Elected Office Fund (AEOF) was scrapped in 2015 and eventually replaced three years later with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by a trio of disabled politicians who warned that the failure to reopen AEOF breached the Equality Act.
AEOF had only been set up in 2012 following Liberal Democrat pressure on their Tory coalition partners; it funded disability-related costs for candidates in parliamentary and other elections, before it was closed by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.
5 August 2021
Thousands of disabled people tell government of day-to-day barriers
Thousands of disabled people have told ministers of the significant barriers they face in their daily lives, with only four per cent saying they believe the government provides a “good level of support” to disabled people.
A report on the results of the Disability Unit’s UK Disability Survey has analysed the responses of nearly 14,500 people, including nearly 11,000 disabled people.
The results informed the development of the National Disability Strategy, which was published last week alongside the survey results, and has been criticised as “not fit for purpose” by disabled people’s organisations.
Many of the concerns related to housing, access to public buildings, crime and safety, benefits, social care and transport.
Asked if they agreed that disabled people were able to live full, independent lives, only about a quarter of disabled people (27 per cent) agreed, while half (50 per cent) disagreed.
And asked if disabled people had sufficient financial support to meet their needs, less than four per cent agreed, while more than 82 per cent disagreed.
When asked if the government provided a “good level of support” to disabled people, only five per cent of nearly 11,000 disabled respondents to the question agreed, while more than 80 per cent disagreed.
Nearly half (about 47 per cent) of the disabled people who responded to the question said that it required at least some effort to get in and out of their home, while more than three-fifths (about 63 per cent) said they had difficulty accessing local public buildings at least some of the time.
Another 45 per cent said they always, often or sometimes felt unsafe in their neighbourhood, while nearly three-fifths (58 per cent) said they were sometimes, often or always mistreated because they were disabled.
Of 1,770 disabled people who said they had reported disability-related bullying, harassment or violence, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the end result of that report.
Asked for the top three things that would make their lives better – as part of one of the few sections of the survey where they were allowed to put their answers in their own words – many disabled people mentioned improvements to financial support, accessible housing, the benefits system, access to public spaces and buildings, public transport, access to social care and healthcare, and better use of reasonable adjustments by employers.
Many disabled people also called for an improvement in the government’s understanding of disability and disabled people’s needs.
In another section that allowed respondents to put their concerns in their own words, one disabled person said: “The employment and discrimination laws are okay, but the consequences of breaking them are not sufficiently significant to prevent unscrupulous employers from breaking them: especially bigger businesses that practically can bully disabled staff.”
And in a section asking respondents to suggest their own solutions for removing barriers, one disabled person said: “There needs to be accountability, meaning enforcement of the Equality Act.
“Employers need to be held to account better in their provision of reasonable adjustments, as do businesses.”
5 August 2021
MPs and experts rubbish government’s claims it cut disability employment gap
MPs and academics have dismissed claims by ministers in their new National Disability Strategy that the government has slashed the disability employment gap over the last seven years.
The claim that the gap – the difference between the proportion of disabled and non-disabled people in work – has fallen from 33.8 percentage points in 2014 to 28.6 percentage points in 2021 is one of the few successes ministers were able to point to in the new strategy.
The strategy also points to the number of disabled people in work growing by 800,000 in four years as further evidence that the government’s disability employment policies have been successful.
But the claims have been squashed by a report by the Commons work and pensions select committee, and a briefing on the strategy by four leading academics who form the Disability@Work group of researchers.
Professors Nick Bacon, from Cass Business School, and Kim Hoque, from Warwick Business School, point out that the disability employment gap has not narrowed at all since 2010, once account is taken of the increasing number of people self-identifying as disabled, according to Office for National Statistics figures.
Their colleagues, Professors Victoria Wass and Melanie Jones, both from Cardiff Business School, say that any claim of progress on narrowing the gap is “misleading” (PDF).
The four academics point out that the government appeared to accept that disability prevalence had been increasing, in last month’s disability benefits green paper, but then ignored this fact when reporting on the disability employment gap in the National Disability Strategy.
Bacon and Hoque point out that they told Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, and his officials about the increase in prevalence in the months leading to the strategy’s publication.
The Disability@Work group also provided evidence on the rise in disability prevalence to the cross-party work and pensions committee’s inquiry into the disability employment gap.
In the committee’s report on the gap, published on Friday, it says that any rise in the number of disabled people in work is “largely because of factors such as overall improvements to the labour market, which have also affected non-disabled people, and an increase in the prevalence of disability”.
It adds: “It does not appear to be as a result of substantial progress in addressing the specific barriers that disabled people face to finding and staying in work.”
A DWP spokesperson said the department would respond to the committee’s report in due course.
But he added: “Through our inclusive multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs we are helping more disabled jobseekers to find, retain and progress in fulfilling work, offering specialist programmes, paired with personal support from our work coaches and disability employment advisers.
“The latest figures show the disability employment gap has narrowed, but we remain committed to reducing it further as we work towards our goal to see one million more disabled people in work by 2027.
“Our recently published National Disability Strategy, Health and Disability Benefits green paper and response to the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation have set out further actions that will support disabled people in their everyday lives, including by boosting career prospects for those who can work.”
5 August 2021
DWP’s JobcentrePlus failure on access is ‘unacceptable’, say MPs
The failure of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to ensure that the employment services it provides to disabled people through JobcentrePlus are accessible is “simply unacceptable”, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.
In a new report on the disability employment gap, the Commons work and pensions committee also criticises the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson.
The committee’s report says: “It is particularly shocking that services provided by the Department for Work and Pensions, whose ministerial team includes the Minister for Disabled People and which is responsible for a significant proportion of the Government’s work on disability, remain inaccessible to some disabled people.”
It says that DWP should act as a “beacon of best practice” on accessibility for other government departments.
The inquiry heard instead that too many disabled people were finding it difficult to access support through JobcentrePlus, including Deaf users of British Sign Language who were not provided with an interpreter, and people with visual impairments who were not offered assistance inside jobcentres.
The committee has called on DWP to invest urgently in an expansion of its provision of alternative formats for its communication with disabled claimants, and to ensure that all JobcentrePlus staff receive impairment-specific training.
The report was published just two days after the government launched its new National Disability Strategy, and a week after it published its disability benefits green paper.
The inquiry report also says that DWP’s notorious work capability assessment (WCA) – which assesses eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits – is “not fit for purpose”.
That conclusion comes after years of campaigning by disabled people and their grassroots groups, and grieving family members, who have repeatedly provided evidence that links the flawed WCA with the deaths of claimants.
The committee said: “The system of repeat assessments and the punitive nature of DWP’s sanctions and conditionality regime can trap claimants in a cycle of anxiety, pushing them further away from the labour market.”
The report also calls for a “radical overhaul” of DWP’s approach to employment support, as its Work and Health Programme is “not working for many disabled people”.
And it calls on the government to “devolve” funding to local areas, so that groups of local authorities can be responsible for commissioning and delivering employment support for disabled people in their area.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said the committee’s conclusions, including that employment support for disabled people needed to be more personalised and localised, were “much more radical actions than anything contained within the government’s disability strategy”.
She said: “We urge DWP to build these recommendations into the implementation of the disability strategy.”
The committee’s report also says that “issues of trust continue to hamper the relationship between DWP and disabled people”.
Stephen Timms, the committee’s Labour chair, said: “Too often decisions affecting disabled people are made without them being meaningfully consulted or listened to.
“During the development of the National Disability Strategy, disabled people have said that the government has failed to make its engagement accessible for them.
“Disabled people and their views must now be put at both the heart of decision making and service delivery.
“Only then can we start to break down barriers to employment and ensure everyone has equal opportunities when it comes to work.”
A DWP spokesperson said the department would respond to the committee’s report in due course.
But he added: “Through our inclusive multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs we are helping more disabled jobseekers to find, retain and progress in fulfilling work, offering specialist programmes, paired with personal support from our work coaches and disability employment advisers.
“The latest figures show the disability employment gap has narrowed, but we remain committed to reducing it further as we work towards our goal to see one million more disabled people in work by 2027.
“Our recently published National Disability Strategy, Health and Disability Benefits green paper and response to the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation have set out further actions that will support disabled people in their everyday lives, including by boosting career prospects for those who can work.”
5 August 2021
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
